Hyuna there is RNG if you get Skyshaper first, but the Seeker battle the only thing to ever RNG-hate me is missing an Acidic Goo, which unlucky misses can screw any attempt, so I rate it as one of the most reliable strats I use for the Tamers.

Hyuna there is RNG if you get Skyshaper first, but the Seeker battle the only thing to ever RNG-hate me is missing an Acidic Goo, which unlucky misses can screw any attempt, so I rate it as one of the most reliable strats I use for the Tamers.

I have both the breed 5 and breed 8 Gilnean Raven. The reason I only use breed 8 is that it has more attack power than breed 5, and that it still has sufficient speed to go first with the +50 % bonus to speed when a flying pet is above 50 % hp.

I'm not saying that a breed 5 won't work, but I haven't tried it. It is a waste of good attackpower to have so high speed, at least in this battle .

Hyuna there is RNG if you get Skyshaper first, but the Seeker battle the only thing to ever RNG-hate me is missing an Acidic Goo, which unlucky misses can screw any attempt, so I rate it as one of the most reliable strats I use for the Tamers.

Just watched your video and would like to point out that I never said it was impossible, in fact I did say I was managing to win...albeit narrowly. My point was that most people on this thread were saying how affective the strat was, and that the ooze lived well into the 3rd pet. I was not able to get my pet to survive through the 2nd pet, day after day.

I guess the distinction I am trying to make is that Cab's strats / team builds pretty much decimate all the tamers. And this was the one exception for me which made me think, I MUST be doing something wrong. I am confident that I was not, and believe that this particular comp is fairly susceptible to RNG (more so than some of the others).

Hyuna there is RNG if you get Skyshaper first, but the Seeker battle the only thing to ever RNG-hate me is missing an Acidic Goo, which unlucky misses can screw any attempt, so I rate it as one of the most reliable strats I use for the Tamers.

Just watched your video and would like to point out that I never said it was impossible, in fact I did say I was managing to win...albeit narrowly. My point was that most people on this thread were saying how affective the strat was, and that the ooze lived well into the 3rd pet. I was not able to get my pet to survive through the 2nd pet, day after day.

I guess the distinction I am trying to make is that Cab's strats / team builds pretty much decimate all the tamers. And this was the one exception for me which made me think, I MUST be doing something wrong. I am confident that I was not, and believe that this particular comp is fairly susceptible to RNG (more so than some of the others).

That was referring to Wowhead where my comment was downrated and trashed because it was "impossible" to use an ooze on seeker. Lol

Poofah wrote:Definitely this. Try Enchanted Broom (Batter/Sweep/Wind-Up) and Phoenix Hatchling (Burn/Cauterize/Immolation). If you don't start against Grizzle, you can Sweep to get him, then Wind-Up Batter Batter Wind-Up him. Phoenix can handle the mechanopeep and the flower, since being faster nerfs their multi-hit attacks, and you can Cauterize their big hits (Wind-Up or Shock and Awe, and Roots).

Tried tonight and died 5 of 6 times. Broom owns Grizzle and has a little life to do something to another pet. Phoenix Hatchling owns Beakmaster but takes damage. Phoenix can't manage Bloom solo even from almost full health. Broom can't finish either Beak off (to allow for an aquatic to take Bloom), or Bloom (mechanical damage is weak against Elementals so he only has 1 5 round strong attack.)

Even tried to sweep Bloom in to kill him 2nd (with Phoenix Hatchling) and still died. Each battle took ~20 rounds.

Broom/Phoenix is not viable from what I have seen. I also tried Kun-Lai Runt + Tiny Snowman with dual Deep Freeze, but both pets are slower than/equal to Payne's pets, Bloom ignores weather effects, so the stun is low probability, and Grizzle takes reduced damage from Takedown.

However! Cabadath in his 1001 pet tips post, suggested Infinite Whelpling P/P [1,1,1]. I tried that with a Mirror Strider H/S [1,2,2], and was able to down Payne after playing with it for awhile. The key is to have the dragonkin racial and Early Advantage up after you down Grizzle and 1 shot Beakmaster.

I still think Molten Hatchling AOE tanking is still the most deterministic 2v3. If you couple him with Enchanted Broom as Poofah suggests, you can take on Payne regardless of who he starts with, and broom can finish up Grizzle after the others are dead. The only problem with this strat is that it is slow (~52 rounds). I just got a Magical Crawdad today, so I will attempt to use a different pet that has a stronger AOE with crawdad backing up with wish. Any suggestions?

The biggest problem with Payne is RNG. He also doesn't use the same abilities at the same time all the time like many other tamers. I've been using broom/Phoenix is prep for 5.2. Sometimes I have 1/2 health on Phoenix at the end, sometimes I have 1/3 going into the last one. I actually prefer for the mech to start so I can hit him with the swap.

If abilities are timed right, you can effectively take away the mech pets Rez. I don't use any heals for this fight opting for burst and speed. My Phoenix setup is (1,2,2) and so far I've been pretty happy with it. If the Phoenix is having trouble with bloom close to full health, it might be the wrong ability set.

Throwing up my current lineups where they differ so we can compare notes:For Aki:Lil' XT, carry pet, Bat P/P

stormlash is the only trainer that uses call lightning, so heartbreak + tympanic tantrum do massive damage. Most effective when Aki starts with stormlash.Bat uses [1,1,1] and wrecks both chirrup and whiskers.

For Niishi, I use Tranquil Mechanical Yeti's Ion Cannon.

I'm also using XT and Emerald PW, for Mo'Ruk right now because I can force the beast first, and it dramatically speeds up the fight.

For Flowing, I use Bat P/P and Flayer Youngling [2,2,2]. Bat opens on Marley with a Reckless Strike, and then if it doesn't crit I swap in Flayer and use reflection and then swap back to bat and finish Marley with another Reckless. Then Bite/Screech/Bite tiptoe, and then swap to carry pet and then to flayer and triple snap and then reflect and then rampage. Super reliable, very fast.

For Zusshi, I use an ooze and finish with Yellow Moth who can finish off whatever 2nd pet and owns the strider.

For burning, I use a Shimmershell Snail H/P with [2,1,1]. He owns the Elemental and does big damage to the flyer. And finish with Emerald PW.

For Obalis, I again use XT because it speeds up the fight so much, and finish off with Emerald PW.

For Antari I use Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling with breath and decoy, and Shimmershell Snail.Snail owns the elemental, and the MPD owns both of the others.

For completeness - I use Snarly and a P/P Yellow-Bellied Bullfrog to zip through Deadwind,and Lil'Tarecgosa and Tranquil Mechanical Yeti for Trixxy.

Definately. During the long test where I was trying to figure out whether there was a pattern to his decision to Bash or not, I had to pass multiple times to make sure he made it to hibernate. Its the cycles where you plan for Bash and he does it that you can really put the hurt on him with 4 rounds of Flurry and a Burrow.

... edit ... So, I tried this out again today and it took me way longer to kill all three adds than I thought it would. A lot of that was down to my wanting to only kill Grizzle when I still had full health and that requires getting the bash prediction right two cycles in a row at least. The good news is that the rabbit handled Beakmaster quite well. Saved dodge/burrow for the latter rounds and avoided his big windup hit. I was still over half health when I got to Bloom. Maybe tomorrow I'll drop the Magical Crawdad, pick a pet good against Bloom that won't suffer too much finishing off Beakmaster if needed and try just burning him down.

Breed 5 S/S Grasslands Cottontail appears to have much higher power and still 325 speed. I will test this strategy when I get a rare one.

Is it possible to buy another one of those ravens from vendor? or do i need to talk to people to make somebody like me enough to go and buy one from their account?

Like Badpathing said, you get to buy one gilnean raven from a trainer pr worgen. If you are unlucky with the breed, you have to level another worgen through the starting zone (big snore). The alternative is to buy one from the ah, or, like you said, get someone to gift you with one .

And of course you would need to stone it up (unless buying a rare one from the ah).

Lilhottie wrote:Even tried to sweep Bloom in to kill him 2nd (with Phoenix Hatchling) and still died. Each battle took ~20 rounds.

What am I missing here?

I'm a little late but here's what typically happens for me:

You want Grizzle, so Sweep if it's not. Wind-Up, and then usually Batter til dead. If too many Batters miss, you might have to finish Grizzle with Wind-Up before he can get his last tick of Hibernate, but try to save the Wind-Up. You're going to take 3 hits of Rampage, so generally the broom kills Grizzle with 150-300 health.

Beakmaster typically does some combination of Batter/Wind-Up/Shock and Awe over his first 3 turns. I try to batter until I think the broom is on its last round, and then Wind-Up, but I don't think this min/maxing is too important. For example yesterday it went like: Broom batters, Beak batters (Broom at ~50 health); Broom Wind-Ups for damage, Beak Wind-Ups for the buff; Broom batters, Beak Shock and Awes to kill the Broom. When Broom dies, I swap in the lowbie, then immediately swap it for Phoenix before it can take damage. The important thing is that Beak doesn't have both of his burst abilities ready, so when he Wind-Ups the Phoenix, you just Cauterize and then take light damage til Beak dies. If the broom ate a couple crits then it might die before it can soak either Wind-Up or Shock and Awe, in which case Phoenix might eat Shock and Awe + stun. If that happens I flip off the monitor and restart, but it's pretty rare.

I put up Immolation sometime during Beak, so then you're doing ~350 damage per turn to Bloom while he does 150-300 damage back with Lash. As long as you can survive Roots and then Cauterize afterward, you should stay ahead comfortably. This part is more about outlasting and less about bursting Bloom down.

Lilhottie wrote:Throwing up my current lineups where they differ so we can compare notes:For Aki:Lil' XT, carry pet, Bat P/P

stormlash is the only trainer that uses call lightning, so heartbreak + tympanic tantrum do massive damage. Most effective when Aki starts with stormlash.Bat uses [1,1,1] and wrecks both chirrup and whiskers.

For Niishi, I use Tranquil Mechanical Yeti's Ion Cannon.

I'm also using XT and Emerald PW, for Mo'Ruk right now because I can force the beast first, and it dramatically speeds up the fight.

For Flowing, I use Bat P/P and Flayer Youngling [2,2,2]. Bat opens on Marley with a Reckless Strike, and then if it doesn't crit I swap in Flayer and use reflection and then swap back to bat and finish Marley with another Reckless. Then Bite/Screech/Bite tiptoe, and then swap to carry pet and then to flayer and triple snap and then reflect and then rampage. Super reliable, very fast.

For Zusshi, I use an ooze and finish with Yellow Moth who can finish off whatever 2nd pet and owns the strider.

For burning, I use a Shimmershell Snail H/P with [2,1,1]. He owns the Elemental and does big damage to the flyer. And finish with Emerald PW.

For Obalis, I again use XT because it speeds up the fight so much, and finish off with Emerald PW.

For Antari I use Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling with breath and decoy, and Shimmershell Snail.Snail owns the elemental, and the MPD owns both of the others.

For completeness - I use Snarly and a P/P Yellow-Bellied Bullfrog to zip through Deadwind,and Lil'Tarecgosa and Tranquil Mechanical Yeti for Trixxy.

If by "comparing notes" you were refering to my teams, here are my comments:

First off, there are of course a lot of viable teams around for the tamers. I haven't tried your teams, so I am not sure whether they are faster or not.

One question: Have you tailored your teams in a way that demands a certain tamer pet to start first, or do these teams work just as well no matter which pet you face first?

I have answered on the go, and might be digressing a bit. But I think that should be ok since you asked to “compare notes” implying a wider perspective to my reply .

AkiI don't use XT as I haven't got him, and most people don't have him and won't get him since he isn't obtainable ingame other than through spending big moneys.

Bat might be viable, but I kind of like the Spirit Crab and Yellow Moth (I used to use Jade Oozeling and Spawn of Onyxia, but I thought that was a little too much on the RNG side of things). With my setup, not having XT, I don’t think it is a good idea for me to switch my Yellow Moth with Bat.

The only footage I have seen of the XT is the powerleveling-technique on youtube concerning leveling pets in Kun-Lai Summit. Seems powerful. In 5.2 it would be interesting to delve further into team-damage abilities vs tamers.

NishiDoesn’t really matter that much which backup pet you have for the Eternal Strider, as long as it is a mechanical, preferably with hard-hitting attacks to finish the battle as quick as possible. Tranquil Mechanical Yeti should be just as viable as the Tonk or Zeppelin.

Mo’rukHaven’t got XT, so I’m not going to comment on that. Emerald PW is of course a very solid pet, but my hopes would be to find a faster and less tedious pet for this fight. The new pets in 5.2 could be interesting.

I like bats. I never really liked Flayer Youngling that much, though. Don’t ask me why; I just don’t like him (probably because I haven’t tried him that much, but when I do I always go *bleh* after a few turns of trying team setups vs tamers).

What I like with Vampiric Batling is that it is very strong, reliable, it can soak a lot of damage without fear as it is guaranteed to hit with an attack the round it dies no matter if it goes first or not, and another attack is guaranteed the next round. If the bat gets killed, it won’t be able to attack the round it gets killed unless it goes first (not likely vs this tamer’s high speed pets). When Marley dives, you use Hawk Eye to buff yourself as opposed to passing or missing an attack because of the Dive.

It probably works well for you, but I just liked the reliability of the Vampiric Batling, and think it’s a fair trade to lose the relatively marginal difference in attack power compared to the Bat breed 4.

Finally: Switching in Flayer if you won’t get a crit on your first reckless strike seems to me to almost guarantee you having to switch more often than not. Vampiric Batling doesn’t have to switch out – it just soaks the damage and hammers on with damage.

ZusshiYellow moth vs Zusshi might be faster than using the Infinite whelpling as it has a very high damage output. The key to Zusshi is to have a pet that can easily and quickly take down the first two pets no matter which order they are fielded. The last pet is just to mop up the last pet, which is very easy to kill - especially because my pet of choice in this battle is Jade Oozeling which sometimes can kill the strider (good luck with those pump-nukes being capped at 40 % of 1400 hp and facing big Absorb-heals).

BurningHaven’t tried snails that much. Something about them haven’t really appealed to me. Not to say that they aren’t good pets; I have my shimmershell snail at lvl 25 ready to go. I guess I just like Acidic Goo AND Corrosion to go with my Absorb, which leads me to Jade Oozeling. Dive can be effective and tactical, but I have tried to find alternatives to snails. I should perhaps try snails more, though

ObalisXT: probably a good pet (I have had it on my list of pets which I consider buying from the AH), but as I haven’t tried it out I have no comment

Emerald PW (and Anubisath for that matter) are boring. I use them because they are solid, but I really would like to use alternatives. I have spent most of my testing-time vs Obalis and Payne I think. Vs Obalis, I have tried both Emerald PW and Anubisath-setups, but I ended up with Infinite Whelpling + Anubisath. Not saying it is optimal though; Obalis and Payne have been annoying. They shouldn’t be that much of a concern in 5.2 though because of the nerfbat hitting the stats of those tamers’ pets.

AntariI have tried a lot of different team setups vs Antari. Among which was the MechPanDrag. As stated earlier, snails haven’t been my cup of tea. Still, it should be a viable pet in this fight.

I loved the Peddlefeet-setup with the stun; it is a good feeling to control the battle with stuns to force pet swaps, combined with a free Shot Through The Heart charge-up.

Another setup I have recorded, and which I almost ended up with as my main Antari-team, is Pandaren Fire Spirit (1,1,2) and MechPanDrag (1,2,2). MPD takes care of the magic pet and the dragonkin easily. Jadefire is too much for MPD to handle though, hence why one starts out with Pandaren Fire Spirit. My notes are a little sparse concerning this team setup, but I believe I chose Pandaren Fire Spirit because it has just enough speed to go first at least vs Jadefire, while still having quite a bit of attackpower. I am open to switching out a pet at the start of the battle if the “wrong” pet starts, if I tailor a team that can survive such a switch while still being reliable and have a carry pet. It might be that I switched out Pandaren Fire Spirit to the MPD if the magic pet started. This was to ensure that Pandaren Fire Spirit would kill Jadefire so that MPD wouldn’t have to have a single round vs him.

Note that Decoy will be nerfed. In 5.1 it has a 5 round CD. In 5.2 it is going to be on a 7 round CD (if memory serves me right). I believe I simulated the 7 round CD whenever I tested teams vs tamers where MPD was one of the pets of the team.

The main reason I scrapped the Pandaren Fire Spirit-team was because the Conflagration nerf in 5.2. This would affect Jadefire as well of course, but I didn’t like to end up with a team after all that work, only to perhaps discover that it was broken post 5.2.

I think your team works out well, so well done . I have come to like my team and think that Peddlefeet makes the execution of the fight elegant. But I might try your team when I have time (bit busy these days so it has been little ingame time for me).

Breed 5 S/S Grasslands Cottontail appears to have much higher power and still 325 speed. I will test this strategy when I get a rare one.

I heard about those as well in another thread and picked one up to replace the S/B (I never get rares farming these guys) Tolai Hare I was using, seeing as how I can use him on the Thundering Spirit as well. But now, I just double bunny Major Payne. One of these days the RNG will go against me, but the bunnies are suprisingly strong against this crew. The really do handle Beakmaster well. Part of that of course is anticipating when he's going to do unleash that little combo of Shock and Awe and second Wind-Up and using Dodge/Burrow to negate it.

Yesterday I guessed wrong on Bash 2/2 times and so the Grasslands ate two Rampages and was at something like only 300 health going into Beakmaster; my team still managed to win pretty easily. Today I only ate one Rampage, but it took off half my health leaving me around 700. IIRC that first rabbit still was able to kill off Beakmaster before moving on to Bloom where I purposefully *didn't* use an available CD to avoid roots damage to make sure he died at a good place for the pet swaps to occur. That kill took 29 turns so, not sure if that would be considered slow, fast or average.

Last edited by Stencil on February 26th, 2013, 4:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

Cabadath wrote:One question: Have you tailored your teams in a way that demands a certain tamer pet to start first, or do these teams work just as well no matter which pet you face first?

I have answered on the go, and might be digressing a bit. But I think that should be ok since you asked to “compare notes” implying a wider perspective to my reply .

...

Thanks for the thoughtful reply Cabadath. Yeah, I was hoping for a conversation of sorts on the topic. Thanks for humoring me.

On your first question, I have thought of being pet-start oblivious for several of them, but didn't let that prevent me from using a dominant team where I have found one. I have toyed some with the above teams starting in different orders, but more work should be done there for sure. (Sorry I ignored that bit of your OP, someone did say that they weren't coming in 5.2 although that's no excuse... )

Okay, to business! First, regarding Lil' XT He is for sale on the pet store. There is also Landro's Lil' XT from the TCG, but Lil' XT appears to be strictly better being an H/P instead of P/B.

I highly recommend him. Five of six of his moves are fun, and with trainers that have some kind of weakness versus Mechanical (either via Call Thunderstorm, or because they are a beast) the Heartbreak/Tympanic Tantrum kills the pet being fought and does huge damage to the back line pets. (I'm surprised Poofah hasn't commented on this move combo...) It also helps that the trainers first attack's are typically weak so they don't hurt him too much with Heartbreak.

Also, his Repair/XE-321 Boombot combo, makes him much more durable but still hitting hard single target. I haven't mixed and matched them, but it seems like it could work as well.

Bat like your Vampiric Batling hits super hard against Aquatics and critters. (I wish I had a VB to compare them.)

For Aki, I used Ghostly Skull H/P [2,1,2] and Yellow Moth P/P [2,1,2] before finding the XT/Bat team. It was reliable as well, but _required_ Stormlash to go first. (It's the only place I've found to use the unique Unholy Ascension so far.)

RE: Flayer - The point of him is twofold: 1, you reflect/deflect all of Marley and Water Spirit's big damage abilities, 2, he finishes tiptoe if you have terrible RNG and burns down Water Spirit at the end. After Marley dies, none of my pets have taken any damage. That seems like a huge advantage. So, any 1 round guaranteed full dodge ability would also work. Reflection just happens to also do damage so it speeds the fight up even more. Soul of Aspects or Core Hound Pup would work just as well for all of these points. A Rabbit will perhaps work as well. I'll have to play with those three.

Yellow Moth is nice on Zusshi because it has a 1 round dodge with a short cooldown and hits SUPER hard. If your RNG is terrible on the first two pets, he can finish the second off and clear the strider.

RE: Snails - they are the hard counter to elementals being Critters with Aquatic damage. I regularly kill Fire Spirit in 3 rounds (dot, dive, blowup), and all Elemental damage is weak against him. The H/P Shimmershell is the best. I'm sure you will have fun if you try him out.

RE: Obalis & Payne - Obalis seems to work out for me, but Payne has been the Heroic Bonus Boss of 2v3 pet battles for me. I am frankly disappointed that they're nerfing these two. I like all the theorycrafting that has gone into trying to defeat Esp. Major Payne.

I used to use Darkmoon Zepplin/Emerald Proto Whelp for Obalis but it's super slow and boring. Lil' XT is much faster and more fun.

RE: Antari - I have a Peddlefeet ready to go looking for something to pwn. I will try him out